


Live-Writing My Own Demise

by birdsforthebourgeoisie



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28236129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsforthebourgeoisie/pseuds/birdsforthebourgeoisie
Summary: poetry is kind of an escape for me and always has been, so here r some of my favorite poems i've ever written. enjoy ig :)
Kudos: 3





	1. standing and taking a knee

america.  
the land of the free  
what i am taught in school, standing up to swear myself to a country i have not believed in in a long time.  
america is not free.

i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america

the streets are lined with blood and debt  
flooding from the sewers  
but isn’t it easier to simply look up?

and to the republic, for which it stands

i’ve never known another america yet for so long i believed what we were taught in school  
america is great.  
we are perfect.  
we have never done anything wrong.  
repetitive propaganda seeping into my brain.  
hypnopaedia.

one nation, under god

we build walls to “keep the corruption” out of our country as if we are innocent.  
we are simply pawns  
america is rotting from the inside out  
but sure, we may play the victim card for as long as we please.  
at the end of the day, this is no level playing field.

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all

people are dying.  
can’t take a stand or a knee  
where do you want us to go, america?  
indivisible, you say  
when were we ever united?  
even those of the same  
* race  
* religion  
* ethnicity  
cannot stand as one.  
we are too powerful united.

america.  
the land of the free.

i don’t remember the last time i actually believed that.


	2. ash and paint

my lungs are full of ash and i can smell it on my breath  
as i gaze up towards the ceiling.  
a blank space.  
i think white is the most interesting color. If any tiny bit of anything else is added to it, it will never be the same again. i stare up at the infinity in this room and wonder how many tries it took to make the perfect white, shiny, glossy.  
but the one of the room i’m in is flaking, shedding on me like snowflakes. my cracked lips open wide, smiling as i watch the pieces of perfection drift down on me like snow. i can’t feel it land anywhere, but i know it’s there. maybe, I wonder, maybe if i layed here long enough i could get buried in snowflakes, and no one would remember who i am. just the girl covered in perfection. a ghost of who I am. i don’t have to put up any fronts, lie to anybody. no one would judge me. 

my lungs are full of paint and i can smell it on my breath as i gaze up towards the ceiling.

i wonder  
just how many  
perfect flakes would have to fall  
to cover me for good.


	3. rainbow and crimson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this poem is about self harm. if that is something that may be triggering to you please skip to the next chapter.

i want to open my skin and let the blood tickle my skin  
flowing in broken dreams and choked back sobs past it’s copies  
this time will be different, i tell myself, letting the demons in my head conquer who i think i am  
take my soul and replace it with a black  
hole in my chest  
one day it will suck me in whole  
i tell myself that this time my blood will be rainbow  
smiling hot tears watching something beautiful finally come out of my pain  
when the crimson exits my veins once again, it becomes harder to think of the rainbow with every breath.  
the rainbow will not appear.  
i am not on the other side.  
i’m a broken person, sitting on their bathroom floor with a broken pocket knife, hoping if they scratches hard enough at their surface, they will find something worth living for underneath.


	4. blue and grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this poem is abt someone called gray who broke my heart and now i spell it grey to take back the power

your breath is fire and you warm me from the lips down to the ground i stand on  
i feel the world around me grow brighter with every second i desperately cling onto you, fingernails digging me back into reality  
i’m seeing colors i didn’t know existed.  
my whole world was gray before.  
your arms tighten around mine and pull me in to your intoxicating lies  
maybe, i tell myself, that’s why i believed them  
you are an addiction.  
warmth makes the absence of it so much more prevalent  
that i find myself shivering when i open my eyes and your fire is gone  
you have left me, and nights of careless whispers mean so much less to you than they do to me  
the color has seeped away slowly and i have begun to forget what blue looks like but when i lay in bed staring at the constellation of troubles in my head  
connecting the dots feels like blue  
it feels like drowning  
and everything is grey


	5. starships and turtles

time passes but it stands still at the same time  
its always been a distant thought in my mind  
is the world faster for you?  
it moves around me at what seems like a normal speed but somehow i know i’m being left behind  
starships and turtles  
i wasn’t meant for here  
that’s what i try to tell myself  
that if i wasn’t meant for here there must be someplace i can go  
once i find it i’ll know

turtles can swim fast in water  
but my world is full of suburban neighborhoods and there isn’t an ocean in sight  
yet somehow i drown  
the clock ticks slower with every second and it’s always a distant thought in my mind  
where do i go?  
starships and turtles  
this world was too fast with me too soon  
and i tell myself that under the right circumstances i would thrive  
but dry land is not my home  
i think i would know if i found the ocean but honestly? i can’t tell anymore  
the world is starships and turtles  
i know the world moves faster for you


	6. romance and heartbreak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you bet this poem is about that gray mf

you could break my heart and i would call it the romance novel of our time  
you could destroy me through and through and i would call it character development  
because in romance novels everything always wrap up in a fancy bow and everyone is always happy.  
the specific formula they’re made from is that way.   
i refuse to believe life is any different  
that sometimes the formula doesn’t apply

for after all, all i am is a hopeless romantic who so badly wants to believe that living is perfect that i will make up a world in my head rather than face the reality  
for if i were to come back down i would have to face the emotional destruction you did to me and internalize the consequences

i sat up late last night writing us a romance novel in my head  
and you were the protagonist.  
not me.   
i never seem to be.  
today i went through and deleted all the pictures of you.   
it was supposed to be a power move.  
i don’t feel too powerful.   
i’m just reminded of how fast everything switched  
and you convinced me it was my fault without even meaning to

this morning i lay in bed and internalized the fact that a romance novel was being unwritten with every silent sob  
because i can’t be the one hurting  
it’s you.  
if i’m hurting i’m weak.  
if you’re hurting you’re strong.  
the last time i held you i breathed you in and i watched you leave without a smile on your face.

i think i knew then but i refused to know.  
but now i’m watching this romance novel burn in my head and i’m seeing all the plotholes.  
and i'm thinking i’m better off living in a world where romance novels don’t exist.


	7. teenage angst and vines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> why am i so gay i hate it here

smiles across the room  
as i stare at the white board  
trying not to look at her  
because i know if i do I will fall  
hours and hours spent laughing on the phone,  
until i’m mumbling my words and she gently tells me to go to bed  
sleepovers and while she slowly drifted off her eyes contained treasures i knew i could never possess but i wanted to anyways  
and although I pushed it down and pretended I could ignore it my heart filled up and no matter how many times I bailed it out  
i was destined to sink  
we talked and she cracked open,  
spilling her life out to me and in the way vines creep over an old house abandoned at the end of a road  
we latched onto each other and clung desperately because in a sea of teenage angst she was my only constant  
and it felt like a romance novel,   
but then it happened as it always happens that one moment where everything changed and the world begins to tilt and the old house crumbles and it did and it has   
and i felt the exact moment  
that the walls gave way  
and the vines were torn from their roots  
i guess i was naive to think anything else could come of it  
it’s the cliche come to life  
the plot of a romance novel left unfinished, discarded and left to gather dust in the corner,   
and it was never the same and i wish it still was but i can’t control it now it’s gone  
and now when i look to the front of the room i don’t feel her eyes turn to me, and i don’t feel them lock as i look at her and i know she no longer thinks of me  
but I don’t fear because I know how all romance novels end  
and one day I will pick it back up, dust it off, and finish what I started.


	8. suburbia and sundown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> here's some short shit i wrote about fucking hating my town enjoy

as the sun fades away over the rooftops of my suburban utopia with it goes my heart  
the world is washed with gray and i begin to feel the chill seep into my bones, locking me in place.  
perhaps this is a cage.  
suburbia looks much different without the sun reflecting off of the classism and it is when the sun falls that i begin to realize the utter uselessness of spending hours trying to find the perfect shade of white to paint one’s house  
i wonder where the trinkets have gone.  
they seem to fade away when there is no one watching them.  
so what is the point?


	9. single beds and God in walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey God it is me being gay again

it is raining in ohio and all i can think about is you  
the soft taps at my window sound like a memory i can’t seem to pull from my mind and  
i’m not scared of rain  
but the last time it rained this hard you were there  
the absence of a single bed in a dorm room that was slowly collapsing onto itself and your voice can send a chill down my spine  
and God is not in my walls no matter how much i try to listen for Him

of all the things to remind me of you, rain is the one i least expected  
but i do not have a selective memory so i suppose i must take what i can get  
vivid memories are what i can hold on to  
they’ll have to do  
so even though i am not scared of the rain  
the emptiness surrounding it terrifies me


	10. neurological headphone cords and one hit wonders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey fun fact most of these were written ab my best friend before i understood my sexuality and i thought we were just rlly close friends enjoy

neurological headphone cords and one hit wonders  
we could talk for hours and barely scratch the surface  
your mind my dear, is limitless potential  
yet you’re held back by your own demons  
and to know that everything you say can come at a price  
a curse as well as a blessing

neurological headphone cords  
your thoughts are hopelessly intertwined  
i stare into your eyes and find stories i cannot begin to understand  
as we attempt to untangle your mind  
and freedom is so close yet so far  
maybe one day i will understand

perhaps one day i will be able to enter your mind and see as you see  
and you burn so bright but you drown inside  
one hit wonder of a mind  
you were not made for living in this world, your say  
but in your eyes i see  
the world that was made for living in you


	11. mirages and memories

when the deepest recesses of my mind take the dark as a cue to begin  
to begin their pushing at my skull  
begging to be let out  
there is no relief for either of us  
for if my skull were to crack open and bleed on this very pavement  
it would spill my hopes and dreams  
caught way in the back of my mind  
between the stars and the earth  
i barely seem to remember them these days  
i cannot let them out for if i did i would see the ruins of something my whole life once revolves around become small  
a dream once possible far gone

a mirage  
so i let them stay and push at my skull  
for to let them out would be to accept that these hopes and dreams are something i can no longer hold on to and will not be able to fulfill  
one day the pressure will become too much for me to bear and i will break  
but for now they hum in my skull  
asking me the questions i have no answer for


	12. you wrote me a poem, my love

you wrote a poem about me, my love, so i suppose i must write one about you.  
perhaps everything will be right in the world when it is done.

i have it up in front of me right now. the words have take a home in the back of my brain, etching themselves into my skull. i cannot even blame you for what you say, though i have tried time and time again. we have outgrown the bed that was too small, the promises too unsustainable and i still think about you the way i did that first night sometimes. 

i wonder if you believe i’m ignoring you. i’m sure you must. emptiness from my end comes from nights of bathroom floors and nail biting, head spinning in circles until i cannot even remember my own name. your notifications sit in my phone and lately i do not even read the messages before setting it down again to be consumed within my own mind. i have become a foreigner in my own head. i am not who i was when we met. 

i know you are trying. i think that is the worst part. you are trying to love me but i am so hard to love, and my fatal flaw will always be falling for you harder than my own body could handle. 

nothing is right within the world as i set down my phone to be overtaken once again. maybe i will text you today. maybe.

this is not poetry, and it is far from an excuse for my actions, but tomorrow i promise i will pick up the phone.


End file.
